Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Some people need a huge amount of attention, and they are worthy of that attention, and they're still exhausting.

I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.

You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person.

But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do